Queen of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #4) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,19

corridor and I strained my ears to listen.

“Every day of recovery she has, the more American lives that are lost. The doctor has given me the go ahead on this, so you need to stop fighting it,” my old friend Jonas replied and I craned my head to try and see them out in the corridor, but they must have been standing just beyond the door.

As far as I knew, no one knew I’d made that call from Jonas’s phone. It still infuriated me that I’d managed to get a phone off of the only prick in this place who apparently didn’t keep his charged up. Had Saint heard me? Did he know it had been me at all? I’d tortured myself thinking about it, hoping he’d known, hoping he’d at least think to look into the mysterious call. It was something he might have done, so maybe there was still a chance he’d gotten something useful out of it.

“She needs time to recover, why are you so determined to push this?” the woman hissed. “Is it about revenge because she gave you that sedative?”

Jonas tutted. “No,” he clipped. “Stop questioning me, Darla.”

They walked to the door and opened it, striding in as Jonas glared at me through his visor. I placed my empty cup down beside me and levelled him with a cold look right back.

“We meet again, Jonass,” I said airily, like I gave no shits what they did to me, even though fear was trickling into my chest again at the way he was staring at me.

“We’re going down to the lab,” he announced and my blood ran cold. They really were planning to expose me to the Hades Virus again so soon. “We need to make more of the vaccine to replenish our supplies,” he continued as Darla threw him a frown.

“Well maybe we wouldn’t have to if the batch we already have wasn’t going to be given to the founders and the rest being auctioned off to the highest bidder today,” Darla muttered and my pulse rate spiked.

“Stop questioning me,” Jonas snapped at her then approached me with cruelty in his eyes. He wanted to make me pay for humiliating him. And he had the chance to do so because of this sick company and Troy Memphis giving them the green light to do anything they had to to create as much of the vaccine as possible before I succumbed to the virus. “Get up.”

“Make me,” I growled.

I wasn’t fit to fight or do much at all with how shaky my body felt. It wasn’t just because of the virus either, so much blood had been harvested from me yesterday, I was running on fumes.

Jonas grabbed my arm in a vice like hold, his eyes blazing with rage and I tried to pull free.

We were suddenly plunged into darkness as all the lights went out and my heart jolted. Silence fell eerily as the sounds of all the machines in the building faded away with the loss of power and my skin prickled as I strained my eyes to see in the dark. There was just something about a power cut that made you feel vulnerable somehow, like all of the electronic crutches you leaned on every day were ripped away with no warning and you were left wondering, can I even survive without them? If they never came back on, what would I do?

Of course, I’d be just fine if that happened. Dad had made certain of that. I could live in the wild like a beast if the need ever truly arose, but for most people, the loss of electricity would be like the loss of a limb.

Jonas released me in surprise but the lights all flooded back on a beat later.

“I swear the whole world is going to shit,” he muttered as he shared a confused look with Darla. “Thank fuck for back-up generators though, am I right?”

She offered a slightly nervous laugh, parting her lips to speak, but just as suddenly, they all went off again, the silence in the building becoming thick. Holy shit.

Then realisation hit me like a hurricane. Because this was no normal power cut. A laugh bubbled up in my chest as I realised what was going on. Relief and hope and excitement twisted together inside me until I was laughing like a maniac and Jonas was demanding to know what was wrong with me.

He grabbed hold of me, just a shadow in the dark as my